Anti-Corruption Film Festival (ACFFest) is aiming to raise public awareness about anti-corruption, build campaigns, improve the practice of anti-corruption, and encourage communities to participate in the fight against corruption through the medium of film.

Please check http://acffest.org/ for further information. The festival happens from 9 – 12 Desember 2013 and conducted simultaneously in Jakarta, Padang Panjang, Malang, Balikpapan, and Palu. You are also encouraged to submit your videos to the festival.

Last week I attended the energy laden Good Pitch Chicago. Good Pitch connects social justice documentary makers with potential funders, partners and networks as they work to complete their films and build their outreach and engagement plans. Most of the work however takes place in the lead up to get the right people in the room - it was an impressive line up of film makers, activists, NGOs, media organisations and foundations that builds on almost 20 previous such events.

It’s a high energy day of theatrics, with meaningful stories recounted through film and funders and campaigners stepping up to offer support. It’s not uncommon for someone to step up and say “I’ll contribute $25,000 of finishing funds” on the spot, or offer the support of their vast network. It was in many ways like sitting in a TV show, with cameras and lights well placed in a purpose built black box. The attendance of the odd star, in this case Danny Glover, adds to the theatrics and energy. Several previous films at Good Pitch have been nominated for best documentary at the Academy Awards.

The day is however a serious showcase of purposeful and powerful documentary films with issues ranging from domestic violence, homelessness in Chicago, racism, climate change and more. All have compelling narratives and the pitchers are well practiced (literally for a couple of days before hand) in presenting their work.

A weakness however is the space for feedback. For the most part no one offers constructive criticism of the films as this tends to take the edge off efforts to build support; a bad comment can cost money and support, as was the case with the last film presented, Becoming Bulletproof, which for all it’s good intentions did fall into some cliche’s regarding people with disabilities. Other films could probably have been equally critiqued, however they had much more supportive panels.

For my liking The Message has the most potential. A new film from Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis that attempts to reframe climate change as an opportunity to radically shift our lifestyles and relationships and proceeds to document a range of communities doing just that. For me it’s the film that is most likely to create a ‘moment’ that can shift the debate in a new direction, and get the climate movement out of the rut it seems to be in.

I’m wondering if Good Pitch would work in Indonesia? Certainly there are enough great film makers. Some small format shifts might be required, it definitely feels American (despite being run by Brits) with people selling their various wares, but it’s also a very social and positive occasion that _I think_ could translate culturally. It would be an interesting experiment.

We’ve made some big transitions at EngageMedia over the last few months.

I’ve picked up my things and moved to Boston to be at fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Berkman is a place abuzz with innumerable amazing projects; from being the incubator of Creative Commons and Global Voices to the more recent MediaCloud, as well as a long time defender of privacy online. Given the recent NSA revelations this role has only increased. Berkman Director Yochai Benkler has some particularly incisive insights that are well worth reading.

I’m also a fellow across at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab, a new space set up just a couple of years ago to ‘advance the new arts of documentary’. ODL is exploring a number of facets of what ‘open’ in documentary means; from participatory practices of production and distribution to interactive narrative to open source technology. Assessing the social impact of documentary films is also strong on the agenda, and a key point of synchronicity with EngageMedia. They’ve assembled a great group of fellows to assist them in this journey.

Whilst here I’ll be doing a number of things.

Drawing on the plethora of available brains and knowledge to explore new possibilities in the networked media space, most centrally in re-working EngageMedia’s strategy.

Expanding EngageMedia’s fundraising: the US tradition of philanthropy makes it the place to find necessary support to grow our work.

Generally taking time to step back. After 8.5 years deeply immersed in EngageMedia’s day to day activities some digestion and reflection is in order.

Given the role shift we’ve hired the fantastic Indu Nepal as Managing Director to work with the EngageMedia team to continue driving our Southeast Asia programs forward. Many safe hands abound, including those our our board.

I’ll soon start blogging more in an attempt to capture the the myriad of ideas in the mix and the unrelenting march of interesting events and talks.

The whole EM team went to Bandung on September 24-26 to work in collaboration with Common Room, video makers and artists from Bandung, Jakarta and Jogjakarta to do a very interesting project that we had been wanting to do since the last couple years: Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI Video Slam 2013

Most people in Indonesia know the film Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, especially those who lived through the 80s and 90s. G30S/PKI is a film that tells the ‘HIStory’ of what happened at the night of September 30th and October 1st,1965 directed by Arifin C. Noer commissioned by the regime under Suharto. It depicts the brutality of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in planning a coup and killing some high-ranking generals. It also shows how Suharto came out as a champion not long after.

This film is the most watched in Indonesia and is considered as one of the most effective propaganda films of all time. All students all over Indonesia were obliged to watch the film on September 30th every year and it was played on the only TV station available at the time, TVRI, since its release in 1984. When private TV stations sprang up in Indonesia in late 80s, the regime also ordered them to play this film every year. Only when Suharto was ousted from power in1998 that this regulation was revoked.

Around 18 video makers and artists got together to revisit the history by watching the film and make video remixes out of the film. They were given the freedom to make their own personal interpretations of the film. Sure enough, imaginations and creativities were in the air. For the whole 2 days, participants were engaged in discussions, ideas sharing, and tried to find ways to put their ideas into works.

On the last evening, we had the honour to have a video call with three political exiles who live in Sweden, where participants asked questions about the 1965 event and the impacts afterwards. They also posted questions to us. The call that was planned for only half an hour went on to more than an hour.

At the end, 14 video remixes were created. Some took on a more serious note, some chose to be funny. Whatever it is, the remixes reflect our way to break the taboo and end the silence of talking about the history of 1965. And we hope that an activity like this can serve as an entrance for everyone especially those involved in it to seek more information and understanding of the dark history of 1965 and be critical of it.

After the completion of our Crossroads workshops in Kuala Lumpur, we started the same initiative in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, to complete our series of training sessions in Malaysia. Even though both cities are located in Malaysia, the situation regarding migrants, refugees and stateless people issues are vastly different.

In Kuala Lumpur, the perspective is more straight forward and we were able to collaborate with many more organizations that are working within the issue. In Kota Kinabalu, however, due to a long history of migration of Filipinos to Sabah and the recent Lahad Datu incident, the issue is much more sensitive and we had to deal it with delicately so as not to cause any uneasiness among the communities there.

The workshop design for KK was also different from KL. Instead of a session every weekend for four to five weeks, we had a workshop stretch of four days. As we were working mostly with citizen journalists and one other resource person from a Filipino migrant’s organization, this design worked better for everyone.

On day one, after an introduction about EngageMedia and our Crossroads project in Malaysia, we started with a session on story ideas and video advocacy. We went through a presentation to understand how videos can be used for advocacy. We also screened a few samples of advocacy videos so that the participants could get some ideas on how they could do theirs.

Following that, we brainstormed on ideas of issues surrounding the theme and listed down details on each issue through discussion. We then selected the best three out of five ideas and thought together about how they can be turned into a story for their videos. We also had a discussion on who would be their target audience and what the messages and goals for their videos would be.

Day two was a session on storyboarding. Here, the participants refined their story ideas by turning them into storyboards. After presentations of all the storyboards, we then went through the six basic camera shots. Samples of videos were shown with explanations on the purpose of each shot.

The next day, we conducted a session on shooting which consists of basic camera handling skills and general camera functions such as the auto and manual focus, pan/tilt guidelines, white balance, backlight, and tripod handling. We went through what needed to be prepared before shooting and guidelines for the actual shooting day and the processes that come after the shooting.

On the fourth (and final) day, we focused on video editing and on compression and video distribution. In this session, the participants learned about various editing techniques, frame adjustments, encoding, and uploading/downloading techniques. We also covered video distribution techniques and introduced the theory, concepts and term on video compression.

After this four-day workshop, the participants went to do their shooting in one week, followed by editing sessions for another week. The three videos from Kota Kinabalu will be compiled together with over nine other videos from Kuala Lumpur for the upcoming Crossroads video advocacy toolkit.

In July 2013, two members of the EngageMedia staff went on a scoping visit to Yangon (Myanmar) and Chiang Mai (Thailand) to see how video is being used by Burmese filmmakers and video-producing organisations to support democracy.

We also looked at the political situation, internet access, technical capacities and other social issues in Myanmar that may affect video production, distribution and archiving practices and needs of filmmakers and video-producing organisations.

Some Highlights from the Report

On Film and Video Capacity Building

There are organisations like the Yangon Film School, and the House of Media Entertainment (HOME) that offer video production training (both for beginners and advanced video makers). There are also opportunities provided for Burmese filmmakers to study abroad. Groups like Kamayut Media offer intensive video journalism training as well.

On Video Distribution Practices

Given the limitations of internet access in Myanmar, online video distribution has been limited. Although many of the filmmakers and video-producing organisations have their channels on Youtube, they really have not thought about online video distribution strategically.

For offline distribution, there is a lot more creativity and strategic-thinking. HOME produces a monthly DVD magazine, Motion Magazine, of short videos and films on human rights, democracy and other social issues. The distribution of this DVD magazine is nationwide through the different National League of Democracy offices and chapters across Myanmar.

Film festivals are also another space where filmmakers are distributing their films locally. There are three annual film festivals in Myanmar:

The Art of Freedom Film Festival

Human Rights and Dignity Film Festival

Watthan Film Festival

These festivals provide an impetus for filmmakers to produce films as well.

For most video-producing organisations, the Democratic Voice of Burma still remains the main distribution channel for broadcasting films and videos.

Some Conclusions

There is an strong, vibrant and growing video field and community in Myanmar. There are opportunities for capacity building and there are examples of creative offline distribution practices. But there is room for growth: